Rich Kids (1979) Poster

(1979)

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7/10
new divorce landscape
SnoopyStyle18 July 2017
Franny Philips (Trini Alvarado) is a 12 year old from a well-off Upper East Side home. She's struggling to grow up with suspicions of her parents splitting up. She keeps track of her father Paul (John Lithgow) sneaking into the house in early mornings to pretend to sleep at home. Her parents are constantly fighting. New kid Jamie Harris (Jeremy Levy) is her best friend. His parents are divorced and he teaches her the ways of the broken home. His mother is new-agey while his father has a fast car and a trophy girlfriend.

The normalization of divorce is still new at this point. Trini is amazing. It doesn't need so much of her parents when she's not in the scene. It's her story after all. The boy is good although he could be sweeter. The puppy love is cute. It's a good small movie of a certain time.
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6/10
Divorce as seen through the eyes of two 12 year olds
Havan_IronOak14 July 2002
They know their IQ's are near genius. They know that the capital of Kansas is Wichita. They know where Mom hides `The Joy of Sex'. But they don't know why their parents have all split up.

This modern look at adolescence rings sad but true. The `Rich Kids' of the title are smart in all of the commonly accepted ways and they are smart enough to realize that there is more to love than what they can see in their parent's sad relationships. In many ways it's the kids in this film that are acting like adults. Perhaps that's the point. Perhaps the `Rich Kids' of the title are not the two adolescents at all, but the adults that are complicating their lives.
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5/10
rich kids
mossgrymk7 December 2020
Probably woulda been better had producer Robert Altman not outsourced the screenplay and direction to the firm of Ross and Young. As it is we have warmed over Woody Allen; that is if Woody had decided to do teen pics. Solid C.
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struck me oddly when it came out
Carl-7031 March 2004
Who can not like John Lithgow even when he is an adulterer? But that isn't the main theme of this movie. Kids dealing with divorce in a very touching way is the real story here. I saw this when it was released and was so struck by it I went back and saw it again the next day. In Lawton, Oklahoma, no less. Not my fault, I was in the Army stationed there at Ft. Sill. Years later I got a copy of the VHS and watched it again. Trini Alvarado is just excellent in this. It is what a movie should be, a thoughtful look into people's lives, with the plus of beautiful cine of NYC. Being from the wide open spaces, the whole NYC thing is pretty fascinating to me. Anyway, this is a really good movie that stands up pretty good over lo, these many years.
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7/10
Rich kids feel not so rich after experiencing parents breaking up
jordondave-2808529 September 2023
1979) Rich Kids DRAMA

Don't let the title fool you for it's really about realization among two 12 year old Manhattan kids, and are best friends of Franny Phillips (Trini Alvarado) and Jamie Harris (Jeremy Levy) living in the same beaten down complex apartment building, experiencing parent separation or break-up. Quite effective and realization piece about two underage kids who're incapable to understand, and doesn't take no sides in the issue for it balances it out. The downside is the mediocre acting and the old 1970s feel but after I got past the first 40 minutes, was when it becomes very resonating. Executive produced by Robert Altman.
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8/10
Watch This Film for Its Intelligence and Sensitivity, and to See Trini Alvarado at Her Best
sts-2611 March 2009
Rich Kids is a wonderful movie, in so many ways. It depicts a time (the late 70's), a class, New York City, and divorce (which was then becoming a social phenomena) perfectly. However, the main reason to watch this film may very well be to see the then adolescent Trini Alvarado at her best.

The Cast is full of great actors, including John Lithgow and Canada's own Roberta Maxwell, but the standout is Alvarado. Her guileless and tender performance is so brilliant that one is almost hypnotized. Alvarado plays Franny as your typical adolescent girl - curious, too smart for her own good, a little daring - but lets her own qualities poke through, and makes her Franny seem somewhat frail, potentially tragic.

There is always a sense that Franny will crumble under the weight of bad news (like the announcement of her parents divorce), and in some scenes this sense fills the room. The other actors are electrified by this, and give wonderful performances. The scene in the Chinese restaurant - when Franny's parents finally break the news - is heart-breaking...and a little funny.

This is one of two Alvarado movies that are absolute Must See's. The other is Times Square, in which Alvarado once again plays a variation of the seemingly-emotionally-frail poor little rich girl. Once one sees both these movies, one realizes what a rare quality Alvarado had at the time. The only actress to compare is a young Sarah Jessica Parker, but by the time Parker was an adolescent she was too much of a board-trodding, song-belting, Broadway-trouper type to be able to let go and open herself up the way Alvarado could.

Watch Rich Kids with this in mind: you are watching a brilliant, unencumbered, child actor at work. Pure acting from an adult is rare enough, but from a child actor, it is priceless.
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4/10
"He's driving a Maserati...in a city where you can't drive over 15 miles an hour."
moonspinner5519 August 2017
12-year-old Manhattan classmates, an intelligent boy and a girl from affluent backgrounds, must deal with their clucking, suspicious, embattled parents. The boy, new in school, is shuffled back and fourth between his bitterly-divorced mother and father, while the girl's parents are trying to conceal from her the fact they are all but officially separated. Faintly amusing comedy-drama wavers uncomfortably at times between satire and hard-shelled sentiment, with the portraits of the immature adults far too obvious. After 22 minutes of character introductions, I was still waiting for the movie to get started. The picture was lent some critical cache at the time because of Robert Altman's involvement as executive producer, though it was released four months after "A Little Romance" and may have confused moviegoers. These kids (Trini Alvarado and Jeremy Levy) are sexually curious, precocious and combative--no angels--and they provide the only interest in an otherwise parched scenario. ** from ****
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8/10
Striking image of the 70s, dated, yet timeless. Alvarado shines.
The_Melancholic_Alcoholic23 February 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Okay, so the title is ... wrong. It's not about rich kids at all, this movie is about kids dealing with their parents' divorce. And, a little with budding love, age 12.

Franny is a 12 year old girl, an only child from an upper middle class, two-income family in New York City, who knows that her parents' marriage is about to fall apart. She's guided by a classmate whose parents already are divorced 3 years earlier, he's new kid at her school. She's mildly precocious, she reads "The Joy of Sex", the illustrated edition, no less, but she's also a topographical nitwit.

The two best things about this film are Trini Alvarado's acting and the scenes of New York which depict a dreamy era. It wasn't so innocent a time, Iran hostage crisis, Reaganomics, and a time when police brutality against minorities was worse than now, but we didn't know about it then. But still. This offers a peek into a somewhat magical New York where 12 year olds demand to walk to school alone, because they're well...12 and not babies, where a class of 25-30 pupils goes to do PE with just ONE teacher in Central Park and where kids walk their dogs solo. (To be sure, this is the 'good' part of town, and 2016 crime is actually half now of what it was in the 80s New York City. Of course this is not what it FEELS like these days. There's the socio-economic paradox of 'the less crime there actually is, the unsafer 'people' - read: whites - .... FEEL'........I digress.)

The movie is dated in the displayed attitudes towards women, Jamies mother doesn't care if her 12 year old SON "screws the brains out" of a 12 year old girl (!), which points to severe unbalance: boys can do what they want, but girls are floozies. Also, there's like 5 gratitutous (and unflattering) shots of Alvarado's butt. That seems a bit unfriendly.

The dated attitude towards gays which we see in the vehement denial of Franny that her father might be gay. Nowadays it would come with an obligatory addition of "It would be okay if he was, of course". Not so much in 1979.

8 oth 10, The Melancholic Alcoholic.
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RICH KIDS. . . They know.
MuzikNFilm29 August 2005
Franny is 12 years old. She, unknowingly, is the glue that keeps her parents together. When she starts keeping tabs on her Dad, however, she begins to unravel the thread that we all dread, Mom and Dad aren't too happy with one another and they are not being honest with their little girl about it. So she starts learning about divorce from a new boy in school who has recently been through it. She realizes that kids have a maturity level that parents never will achieve. Thus said, the parents embark on an all out search for their daughter amidst the crazy world of a rich kid who has everything. His Dad lives in the most idyllic bachelor pad and doesn't dote on him, his mother is happily married to a psychiatrist cause she doesn't have to pay for the sessions. Ahhh the pleasures of divorce. Franny comes full circle with the acknowledgement of her fighting parents and that it's not her fault and they will love her no matter what. If you are a Robert Altman fan then this film is for you. If you like a good family film with a great score then this is for you. I saw it in the theaters in 1979 and have since loved it on every viewing. I wish this movie was on DVD, but for the time being look for it on Showtime or Encore in WS.
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